Category Archives: Copyright

A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Music, Stupidity

Why do creators still follow the old way?

I just listened to the new Megadeth album.  Apart from the opener, Kingmaker and the cover, Cold Sweat from Thin Lizzy, I don’t really like it.  For me to say that, is a big thing.  If anything, you can call me a Mustaine Fanboy. I still cop flack for liking Risk.

The idea of the album has evolved since Megadeth released Killing Is My Business in 1985.  In this day and age, the fans want more.  Our time is valuable.  TV shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead can take us away from listening to music.  Gaming can also limit our time.  We live in a world of choice.  If something is not good enough, we just move on.  It could be another band, a movie, a TV show, a game, a book, a magazine, a holiday and so on.

I still purchased the physical CD of Super Collider, so that I can have it as part of my Megadeth collection, however I cannot recommend it.  I wish I could.  What disappoint’s me is that Chris Broderick is still utilised purely for his lead breaks.  Is that all he is capable off?  I don’t think so, however that is how it remains in Megadeth.  Dave Mustaine is the riff meister.  He is the songwriter, however in this case, I believe that the songwriter of the band has gone missing.  It’s not a bad album and it’s not a good album.

Going back to the meaning of the post.  Why did Megadeth and Dave Mustaine follow the old way?  He could have recorded and released more frequently and still toured behind Gigantour?

For example, he could have recorded and released Kingmaker one month and then released Cold Sweat from Thin Lizzy the next month.  During that two month period, the band could have fine tuned the other songs, written better ones or just kept them as the same, if the initial songs connected with the fans.

There is no need to follow the “spend six months creating and recording an album”, release it, watch it fade away from the minds of people’s within weeks and then go on tour of the world and hope that the tour will rekindle sales.

Don’t get me wrong, the above format still works for great albums.  Five Finger Death Punch released American Capitalist in October 2011, and it is still selling.  They got five singles out of it.  The fans spread it via social media.  They have a new album coming out in July and then another album scheduled for either a November 2013 or February 2014 release.  I really liked how Coheed and Cambria did the same thing with The Afterman releases and Stone Sour did the same with House of Gold and Bones.  The bands need to be here today, everyday.  If you are gone tomorrow, in this day and age, its game over.

Megadeth in this case didn’t have enough material for a great album, and that is all we have time for these days.  I still love the band, I will still purchase tickets to Gigantour if they bring it to Australia and I will be hoping that Megadeth return to writing great songs.

Keeping with the creators following the old way theme, there is an interview doing the rounds at Loudwire, with Shinedown singer Brent Smith.  Basically, back in April, Shinedown allowed their Facebook fans to vote on which songs the band should cover.  So after the results came in, the band went away and filmed themselves playing the cover songs.  They have no plans to sell the songs. All they want to do is release the video’s of them performing the cover songs on YouTube, so that they releasing content each week. However, they cannot release the songs due to licensing issues.

The licensing part of music, is the old way of thinking.  This the way it works in two sentences.  The creators write the songs and then sell the songs for a fee to a publisher.  The publisher then licences the songs to advertising, TV shows and collects monies for them.  In my view, Publishers should be all shot and buried.

If anything, Shinedown will bring more attention to the original versions of the songs they cover.  I know that I am keen to hear them do Nothing Else Matters from Metallica.

Shinedown is trying to do things the new way, releasing content more frequently.  Amaryllis came out in March, 2012.  It’s still in the minds of the public.  As at last week, it was sitting at 410,000 sold in the U.S. alone.  Now they are going to be involved with the Carnival of Madness Tour.  In between they also released the Warner Sound’s Live Room Sessions EP  and Brent Smith has been very vocal about getting fans to speak up and stand up for rock music via social media and the hashtag (#theriseofrockandroll).  They also have the covers YouTube clips up their sleeve.  

The game is changing every day. The old wayers’ need to get in bed with the new wayers’ and start thinking differently.  It’s not all about the initial pay-day on release day.  It’s about staying in the minds of the public and the fans.

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Alternate Reality, Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Fear of the New – Alternate History

The Pirate Bay celebrated their 7 year raid anniversary a few days ago, so the question needs to be asked, what can the music business learn from The Pirate Bay?  The Pirate Bay has been court blocked in various countries, however, that still hasn’t stopped people in those countries from accessing the website, via proxies.  On top of all that, the site has gone through numerous changes, like removing its tracker then moving to magnet links, and a few months ago the torrent site moved to the cloud. The site has also switched domain names on multiple occasions.

All of these changes make the site more resilient and it all started seven years ago, when the Pirate Bay was first raided.

So let’s think about this for a second.  The Pirate Bay, is a site that wants to escape the long arm of justice and in order to do so, they keep on innovating so that they remain open.

So what has the RIAA (the music labels lobby group) done during the last 7 years on the innovation front.  All I keep on reading, is that Google keeps on getting millions of take down requests from the RIAA and the labels.  They still want legislation enacted that will put the internet under their control.  They still want others (like ISP’s) to enforce copyright breaches.  Basically, they still want others to pay for their own short comings.

Let’s see what an alternate history could have been created, if the RIAA innovated instead of legislated.

2003 – The Pirate Bay and MySpace is established.  The RIAA and MPAA take the opportunity to purchase the technology and employ the creators.  With integration between both technologies, both sites are relaunched as The Entertainment Portal. Users that want to upload, need to create an account, however users that want to download don’t need to be members.  Downloading is all free and the The Entertainment Portal makes money from advertisements.

2004 – The Entertainment Portal want to engage more people to upload their collections, especially hard to find and long forgotten titles.  They even give out awards to the people who upload the most, much in the same way they give out gold records to artists who sell.

In the meantime, The Entertainment Portal has been working on advancing the MySpace technology, so that users can also personalise it and share their own stories.

2005 – Cyber lockers start to become a threat, however The Entertainment Portal is too busy innovating to care.  A video sharing technology is released.  It is called YouTube.  A new feature is also added where users can do status updates.  Everything is rebranded to become The Portal, a one stop shop for anything to do with entertainment.  

2006 – A streaming service is offered for both music and movies.  Users can also stream new release movies into their homes on the same day of release.  The Portal encourages users to do movie launch parties and to share it over the Portal.  Users are also encouraged to create their own “hangouts”, where they can play radio DJ to other people in the hangout.

… to be continued

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Copyright, Piracy, Stupidity

Copyright Stupidity

http://torrentfreak.com/five-undercover-police-cars-sent-to-arrest-single-alleged-movie-pirate-130525/

There is a story doing the rounds over at Torrent Freak. Refer to the link above.

The tone of the story is about the power that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) funded Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) holds in the U.K. It looks like copyright infringement these days involves a lot of police resources and judicial resources all based on evidence that is gathered by FACT officers. Think about that for a minute. The Police Department is not doing any investigation of their own. They are taking the evidence of FACT officers as being true and correct. In addition, these are non-violent crimes, so for the police to invest large resources, is extreme to say the least.

FACT is funded by the MPAA. The MPAA is funded by the U.S movie studios. The Movie Studios have an agenda; to bring the distribution of movies back under their control. They want it to be like it was before the Internet came along.

That is why the Movie Studios get the MPAA to lobby hard to change legislation. The MPAA, tried to do this with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) and they failed.

In the meantime, MPAA funded FACT organisations have sprung up all over the world. The Australian FACT version took one of the medium size ISP players to Court, so that a judge can declare that ISP’s are responsible for copyright infringement. They failed. Negotiations then started with FACT and all the other ISP’s about a warning/strikes system. Even these have broken down.

Going back to the story, when the alleged “violent” copyright infringer was questioned/interviewed, it was done by FACT officers, while the Police sat back. Then when it came to charge the alleged copyright infringer, it was unclear as to what he has done wrong, and on his bail sheet, it is referred to a Miscellaneous Offense.

So let me get this straight.

1. An out of hours search warrant is issued. This would involve a Judge, Police Prosecutor and FACT officers.
2. Five Undercover cars, containing 10 Police Officers, plus FACT officers raid a house, where the alleged copyright infringer doesn’t live anymore. Put this down to the great investigation from the FACT officers. Put this down to Police incompetence for not investigating the matter as well.
3. Once they find out from the current residents of the property where the alleged copyright infringer lives, 3 police cars, containing 6 police officers plus FACT officers raid the current place of residence of the alleged copyright infringer.
4. The raid is due to the alleged copyright infringer recording and distributing Fast and Furious 6 and a few other titles. However, the items seized included three servers, a desktop computer, blank hard drives and blank media. NO movie recording equipment was seized.
5. Back at the Police Station the alleged copyright infringer is interviewed/questioned by FACT officers, while the Police Officer sits back and observes.
6. The alleged copyright infringer was then let out on bail, with the charge recorded as an Miscellaneous Offense.

So all of this time is invested just for a Miscellaneous Offense. This is Copyright Stupidity at its worst. This is what happens when the judicial process has been sold to whoever pays the most. If you look up conflict of interest in any dictionary, you will see the above debacle fitting in with the definition.

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Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced

The Kashmir Effect

Stone Temple Pilots – Plush (1992)

And I feel that time’s a wasted go
So where ya going to tomorrow?
And I see that these are lies to come
Would you even care?

Yes, Stone Temple Pilots did a derivative work of Kashmir.  Instead of going up the fret board chromatically, they go chromatically down the fret board.  The drums and the feel of the song, is John Bonham reincarnated.

Plush is from the excellent debut album Core.  Regardless of the Scott Weiland shenanigans going on right now, there is no denying that Stone Temple Pilots released two ground breaking albums.

Kingdom Come – Get It On (1988)

We’ve come a real long way to be with you
It’s not that easy doing what we do
There are those lonely times and then there’s happiness
Now it’s time we gonna do what we do best

Get It On was the reason why people went out and purchased a million plus units of the debut Kingdom Come album. People actually thought this was Led Zeppelin. The verse riff is very heavily inspired from Kashmir.

Whitesnake – Judgement Day (1989)

We walk toward desire,
Hand and hand
Through fields of fire
With only love to light the way
On the road to Judgement Day

The Kashmir effect strikes again. Whitesnake must have said, if Kingdom Come can pull it off, why can’t we.  It should have been the lead off single instead of the re-recorded Fool For Your Loving.  Dave Coverdale had a lot to prove when he started to write the follow-up to the mega successful Whitesnake 1987 album that was penned with John Sykes.

Metallica – The Call Of Ktulu (1984)

The same riff that Mustaine wrote for The Call of Ktulu, is the same progression that is used in Kashmir.  It is also in the same key of D minor.  The only difference, is that Dave Mustaine arpeggio’s the notes.  Dave Mustaine doesn’t play on the Metallica version, that was released on Ride The Lightning, however he is the creator of the main piece of music on this song.

Dream Theater – Metropolis, Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper (1992)

As a child, I thought I could live without pain without sorrow
As a man I’ve found it’s all caught up with me
I’m asleep yet I’m so afraid

Somewhere like a scene from a memory
There’s a picture worth a thousand words
Eluding stares from faces before me
It hides away and will never be heard of again

When the verse riff kicks in, it’s Kashmir at a prog level.  The chordal keys that happen over the Em triplets, is all hair on the back of the neck stuff.  Pull Me Under introduced Dream Theater to the world, however Metropolis is the star on the Images and Words album.

Megadeth – Hanger 18 (1990)

The military intelligence
Two words combined that can’t make sense
Possibly I’ve seen too much
Hangar 18 I know too much

Kashmir and The Call of Ktulu merged into an excellent thrash opener that deals with aliens and conspiracy theories.  Dave Mustaine references himself and Jimmy Page again.

Coheed and Cambria – Welcome Home (2005)

You stormed off to scar the armada
Like Jesus played martyr,
I’ll drill through your hands

The verse riff and the John Bonham drums.  It’s Kashmir again.  Coheed and Cambria knew they had a winner with this song.  It is the song that announced them to the world.  It is the song that we all wanted to hear at the recent concert I attended at the Metro Theater in Sydney.

Megadeth – In My Darkest Hour (1988)

My whole life is work built on the past
But the time has come when all things shall pass
This good thing passed away

The B to C to C# to D note changes over a E pedal point from In My Darkest Hour is the same is the A, B flat, B, C over a D pedal point from Kashmir.  Music written after the death of Cliff Burton, had to be epic and it had to be big.

Kashmir is Led Zeppelin’s definitive statement.  It was released in 1975 on the excellent double album Physical Graffiti.  It’s influence since then on the rock / metal scenes is extraordinary.  Even Hip Hop sampled it.  The Tea Party built a career on it. The bands mentioned above wrote career defining songs on it.

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Copyright, Music, My Stories

Dave Mustaine – What Do Ya Mean? I Don’t Write Good Lyrics

Megadeth has a new album coming out, called Supercollider due to be released on June 4, 2013.  It will album number 14.  That got me thinking about the lyrics that Dave Mustaine has written for Megadeth, throughout their 30 year existence.

Holy Wars – 1990, from Rust In Peace

Brother will kill brother
Spilling blood across the land
Killing for religion
Something I don’t understand

Fools like me, who cross the sea
And come to foreign lands
Ask the sheep, for their beliefs
Do you kill on God’s command?

How prophetic is this song? It was written in 1990, and at the time it was in reference to the IRA and the Northern Ireland issue.  If you hear the lyrics for the first time today, you would make the connection to something different.  The song is intense.  If anyone asked me to play them three songs that would sum up the Thrash movement,  Holy Wars would be first, Master of Puppets from Metallica would be second and Seasons In The Abyss from Slayer would be third.

Symphony Of Destruction – 1992, from Countdown To Extinction

You take a mortal man,
And put him in control
Watch him become a god
Watch peoples heads a’roll

I have known people who have been put in position’s where they have a certain amount of power and control.  They start out with good intentions.  In time, they begin to change, they develop the god complex and people either start to turn away from them, or for they ones that stay, they end up getting burned.

Kick The Chair – 2004, from The System Has Failed

Justice means nothing today
Now that the courts are for sale
Pick a crime from the menu, pick a sentence and defend you
And pick up the down payment called bail
The system’s for sale!

Mustaine covers the topics of justice, corruption and freedoms a fair bit.  Kick the Chair is from The System Has Failed album.  The album title alone tells the listener what they are in for.  These days, Justice is given to the ones who pay the most.  We have the Entertainment and Publishing Industries using Copyright as a form of censorship.  Just recently a Latvian school teacher was arrested and interrogated, for creating a website that provided access to school children to certain books.  What is more important, Copyright or Education.  Back in my day, the teachers used to photo copy the text books and give them out to the students.

Bite The Hand – 2009, from Endgame

They ball-gagged Lady Justice
And blindfolded her so she can’t see
The erosion of the people’s trust
Of what will come to be an FDIC Assisted Suicide

The depression of a depression
Worldwide suicide for the economy
Caused by the dialectic chaos when the
Mob on Wall Street took “We the People” for a ride

A song written after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). As each day went by, more information came out as to why the GFC happened.  It all pointed to greed, corruption and conflicts of interest between the revolving door of Government officials and Lobby Groups.

A Secret Place – 1997, from Cryptic Writings

There’s a secret place I like to go
Everyone is there but their face don’t show
If you get inside you can’t get out
There’s no coming back, I hear them shout

Didn’t we all have that secret place growing up.  That secret place in our heads.  Leave it up to Mustaine to make it sound sinister.

Skin Of My Teeth – 1992, from Countdown To Extinction

I won’t feel the hurt
I’m not trash any longer
That that doesn’t kill me
Only makes me stronger
I need a ride to the morgue
That’s what 911 is for
So, tag my toe and don’t forget
Ooh to close the drawer

The opener from the excellent Countdown To Extinction has some of the best Mustaine lyrics ever committed to paper.  The last verse is a classic.  It’s a well-known fact that Mustaine has battled addiction, and as he says what doesn’t kill him can only make him stronger.

Peace Sells – 1986, from Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying

What do you mean, “I don’t believe in God”?
I talk to him every day
What do you mean, “I don’t support your system”?
I go to court when I have to
What do you mean, “I can’t get to work on time”?
I got nothing better to do
And, what do you mean, “I don’t pay my bills”?
Why do you think I’m broke? Huh?

Even though Peace Sells came out in 1986, I heard the album in 1988, just before So Far, So Good, So What came out.  Growing up, listening to metal and rock music, put you into this social class of troublemakers, drug takers and devil worshippers.  So when I heard Peace Sells, the words said what I and many others wanted to say.

“What do you mean” became the war cry.  To me, it summed up, the metal community.  Yeah we could get wild, we could get high and we could get rowdy, however in the end, we still paid our dues to the system.  We still worked, we still paid our bills/taxes and most importantly we still contribute to the system.

Foreclosure Of A Dream – 1992, from Countdown To Extinction

Barren land that once filled a need
Are worthless now, dead without a deed
Slipping away from an iron grip
Nature’s scales are forced to tip
The heartland cries, loss of all pride
To leave ain’t believing, so try and be tried
Insufficient funds, insanity and suicide

This song was released in 1992 and like Holy Wars, how prophetic was it?  It could have been re-released in 2008 or 2009 and it would have fitted in with that time.  That is the power of music when it is done right.  It is timeless.

The Right To Go Insane – 2009, from Endgame

I barely get to the graveyard shift on time
After pulling another grueling nine to five
I live from credit card to check
The paper money’swhirling by
And I hardly just, just barely, only just survive

I could relate to this song.  Working like a slave just to give it all away to the taxman, the banks and the utility providers.  Then doing it again and again and again and again.

We The People – 2011, from Th1rt3en

Violate your rights, no more equality
Surrender freedom, your Social Security
We, the people face unconstitutional lies
In greed we trust, in revolution we die

Our founding fathers are rolling in their graves
The land of liberty needs a regime change
Until you no longer know right from wrong
The constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s written on

Final say.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, Piracy

Creativity involves Diversification

I love creativity.  It could be a song, a story, a novel, a comic, a movie, a photograph, a TV show or even a website.  We are overloaded with people creating something.  Some of it is good, some of it is bad.  However that is subjective to my tastes and interests.  Stuff that I like, a lot of other people don’t like.

Due to the Internet, the entry barriers to promote creative works have diminished greatly.  That is a good thing.  Sometimes it takes years for the creative works to be discovered by an audience that appreciates it.

Check out Randy Blythe’s Instagram account.  This dude, takes awesome photo’s and then adds a story to each photo that he takes.  He personalises his creativity.  You don’t have to be a fan of Lamb Of God, to appreciate the creative work of Randy Blythe.  He doesn’t even advertise that he is the singer of Lamb Of God, all he has are the words, “In some band. I try and be a good man.”  Make sure you check out his photos from Prague, during the court case.

Nikki Sixx is another, that is creating quite a few different creative outlets.  Apart from Motley Crue, he also has Sixx A.M.  On top of that, he is a book author, photographer, web show DJ and many more.

Check out the photos on his Tumblr account and on his Instagram account.  Even Nikki Sixx has started adding stories about his photos, in a similar vein to Randy Blythe.

There are others, like Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria and Corey Taylor from Stone Sour, that released concept albums and are branching out into graphic novels, comics and movie deals.  Robb Flynn from Machine Head is another that is building connections with his fans, by posting his Journals/Ramblings up once a week.

That is what it takes these days to make it.  You need to be creative 24/7.  You need to remain in the public eye.  You need more than just one outlet.  Selling music is a zero sum game.  Having all your eggs in the one basket, is not good risk management.  Spread out, diversify.

You need to connect with people.  It could take years or it could take days, so be prepared to put in time.  You probably will not be paid and any monies you are paid, would not be enough to support a family, but then again, all creative people create because they love it.  It is an outlet to them.  Somewhere through the years, this changed to people creating just to be paid, which is a shame.  Look back at all the masters of history, from Beethoven to Bach to Dali and Monet.  They created music and paintings, not to be paid in the millions, because they wanted too.

So don’t buy in to all of the piracy and copyright infringement bullshit, put forward by the entertainment industry’s lobby groups like the RIAA or MPAA or the labels/studios themselves.  Creativity can bring back many financial gains, you just need to be prepared to put in the time.

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Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Queensryche – Operation Mindcrime

A telephone rings twice.   Nikki walks over to the phone and picks it up.
“Hello,” answers Nikki.
“Mindcrime, Mindcrime,” is the reply from the other end.
The music behind it sounds sinister.  In a panic, Nikki hangs up.  He is disorientated.  The words are strange and yet familiar.  His hands are shaking.  The phone rings again.  Don’t pick it up he tells himself.  Don’t do it.  What he is thinking and what he is doing are two different things.  They are out of sync.  He picks up the phone…

I added the above, in an attempt to describe how Operation Mindcrime (the song) begins.  It is a song written by Chris DeGarmo, Geoff Tate and Michael Wilton.  To be fair to Wilton, he has had his share in co-writing some Queensryche classics (Empire is one song that comes to mind immediately), however compared to the quality output of DeGarmo, it pales. 

In order to explain where Operation Mindcrime (the song) fits into the story arc, I need to back track a little bit.  Nikki, is a heroin addict who is manipulated into joining an underground organization dedicated to revolution (this is the Revolution Calling song).  At the head of this organization is Dr. X, a man who manipulated Nikki by feeding his heroin addiction, while at the same time brainwashing him in the process.  Whenever Dr. X says the word “Mindcrime” Nikki becomes his servant, his puppet, a catatonic mental state which Dr. X uses to his advantage, by commanding Nikki to undertake any murder that the Doctor wishes.

It just takes a minute
And you’ll feel no pain
Gotta make something of your life boy
Give me one more vein
You’ve come to see the doctor
Cause I’ll show you the cure
I’m gonna take away the questions
Yeah I’m gonna make you sure

A hit man for the order
When you couldn’t go to school
Had a skin job for a hair-do
Yeah you looked pretty cool
Had a habit doing mainline
Watch the dragon burn
No regrets, you’ve got no goals
Nothing more to learn

Story telling in music.  This song came out in 1988.  How relevant does it sound today.  Just think of all the current Islamic terrorists.  They are normal kids, from poor backgrounds, that are all looking for a place where they can belong.  They are perfect prey for the religious demi gods looking to turn them into weapons, to turn them into puppets and servants, so that they carry out their bidding. 

Here’s a gun take it home
Wait by the phone
We’ll send someone over
To bring you what you need
You’re a one man death machine
Make this city bleed

How many cities have bled from the actions of a few individuals.  Operation Mindcrime deals with death by assassination, in real life, death by terror is what we are confronted with. 

As much as Operation Mindcrime is a story, you can go as far as to call it a prophecy.  A vision of a future where the democratic governments, become far from democratic.  Where our Government elected officials serve the Corporations, instead of the people that voted them in.  The lyrics in Speak state the same, “the rich control the government, the media the law”. 

These days, people do more jail time and pay more fines for Copyright infringements, then people smugglers, then drug smugglers, then murderers and rapists do.   How can that be so?  The answer is easy.  Copyright is controlled by the Corporations, and who do the Corporations control, the Government.  The Government even granted the Corporations a Government granted monopoly. 

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Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity

Fans Rushing The Stage – Part 2 – Copyright As Censorship

It looks like the video I was linking too in this post, was taken down from YouTube, due to a copyright complaint filed by SME (Sony Music Entertainment).  This is wrong on so many levels.

For starters, there is no music playing on the footage.  So I am struggling to understand how this infringes on any copyright.

Next, Motley Crue is signed to their own label, Eleven Seven Music, and the distributors are Universal Music Group and RED Distribution, LLC which is a Sony Music Entertainment division that handles distribution for independent record labels.

Again, this is a very far reach from SME to say that they own the copyright to a fan filmed video, that first has no music in it and it is from a band that is on their own label and use a division of SME for distribution ONLY.

I see this as legacy industries using Copyright as Censorship.

What these legacy industries fail to understand is that the internet is a copy system.  Here it is again.

And again.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories

Living with unfairness

It’s late and I’m laying in bed. I can’t sleep so I reach over to the iPhone.

How things have changed? We are connected all the time. As I’m checking
my emails I’m thinking about the game of football my kids played on the
Saturday and the refereeing from the other teams coach. It got me a bit
upset at how the referee was coaching his team while refereeing. I started to think about how unfair it was that my boys team had to go back to half way when his team had a goal kick and when we had a goal kick he would make his players stay 5 meters away. It’s not fair is it.

The kids had a draw but they won the game in my heart and everyone else’s that watched it.

Why?

They rolled with the punches and kept on rising to the occasion. A game of football is the same as life.

We win, we lose. We feel good, we feel bad. However in football when something is not fair, the team unites and rises above and beyond their
abilities. In life, that feeling of unfairness can either cripple you or make you work harder or work differently.

How many times have I heard a person say, it’s not fair. It probably wasn’t fair to one person but it was fair to the other.

Don’t complain about it. Don’t forget about it. Learn from it and move on.

Music is a classic example when it comes to unfairness. The whole
industry is built with the cards stacked against fairness. Artist used to say how unfair the contract was that they signed or how unfair the label treated them. Then the Internet came along and now it’s the labels shouting how unfair it is. The favourite PR line, “the Internet spreads piracy and it needs to be controlled.”

Instead of rolling with it, learning from it just to rise above it, they want to control it, obliterate it as they are too lazy to innovate on their own. Spoil it for billions to protect the profits of a few. Maybe these label heads and their politician friends in their lobby group need to come and watch a junior football game, see how unfair the real world actually is.

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Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Universal Music Takes Down Black Sabbath’s – God Is Dead? and then Re-Instates It

Article at Torrentfreak

Universal Music Group is known for its bogus take down requests.  Then when it is pointed out the error they made, they blame YouTube for following with their request.  Of course it is now back up.

I can understand the reason for the take down requests.  It was meant to take down content that was infringing or content that was making money by using music from UMG artists and UMG wasn’t taking a cut.

So how the Official Black Sabbath YouTube page fell into that category is beyond me.  All UMG has done here, is ensure that the fans have ripped the work and put it up on a thousand other channels and websites.   Check YouTube now and you will see many pages that are offering the song.

Stupidity by Labels – TICK

Treating Legitimate Fans Like Shit – TICK

Using COPYRIGHT to protect profits and bottom lines – TICK

Blame Technology when errors are made – TICK

Ensure that people pirate the content as the legal option was taken down – TICK

Then Scream PIRACY so that Legislation can be written – TICK

I was looking at the numbers.  PSY’s new song Gentleman has 167,000,000 views.  Black Sabbath’s comeback song with Ozzy is sitting at 118,000.   Even the Sabbath In The Studio series was averaging about 250,000 views.

If you are interested in my take on God Is Dead, click here.

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